24mo. (12)ff., accordion fold. Based on an assignment Chen gave to her students at Mills College, in which she asked them to create a book inspired by one word, Leavings explores the materiality of language. As Chen's text progresses at the left, each right panel presents a tag labeled with a synonym for leavings: fragments, discards, scraps, shards, remnants, and residue. Although the tags are otherwise, at first glance, identical, the reader can then pull the tag out of its sleeve, revealing a different specimen of "leaving" contained in an adhered semi-translucent envelope. The accordion's verso adds to this quasi-cabinet of curiosities, showing another set of five synonyms—tokens, vestiges, traces, suggestions, and scars—paired with illustrations of further specimens visible at first through a cut-out window, then on the pulled-out tag. The whole project offers a participatory experience of the duality of gathering and loss, of forgetting what was once yours and finding what once belonged to someone else. Held in cloth-covered two-flap box with paper label and ties. Fine.